Who We Are
by Persephone Kore
Summary: Complete. Time's Riddle 1.Voldemort makes an electrifying return, and Harry talks the illustrative illusion of a young Tom Riddle into reality -- and into supplanting his older self. Also involves a loyal snake, an unwontedly animate frog, and Quidditch.
1. All the Lights Went Out. Again.

_Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction based on the Harry Potter books by J. K. Rowling. No claim is made on the characters or setting, and no material profit is intended or expected._

**Who We Are 1/3  
by Persephone**

"You need a haircut," Uncle Vernon barked. 

Harry Potter looked up at the black hair sticking just in front of his eyes.

"And don't roll your eyes at me!" 

"I wasn't," Harry protested. "I was looking at my hair."

"Don't you get smart with ME, young man." Uncle Vernon shook a finger at him. "You rolled your -- your unnatural-colored eyes at me." 

Harry didn't think that green was a terribly unnatural color, but there was no point arguing. He did want to get to King's Cross the next morning, as his third year at Hogwarts was about to begin, and it would be better to avoid giving the Dursleys any more excuse to interfere with this than necessary. 

All the lights in the house went out.

"HARRY!" Aunt Petunia shrieked into the darkness.

"I didn't do it!" 

"Dinner will be _ruined_.... Poor Dudley, don't worry, we'll find you something to eat...." 

Maybe he should try to sneak out and walk there overnight. 

*****

Harry pushed his bangs out of his eyes -- he was starting to agree with the Dursleys about his needing a haircut, and only about that -- and was about to walk through the barrier and onto Platform Nine and Three-Quarters when all the lights went out. Again.

Now, it was morning, so King's Cross was not exactly plunged into pitch darkness, but it was still noticeable that all the artificial lighting and electrical signs suddenly dimmed to nothing. They came back on with a sort of plaintive buzz after only a moment, flickered a bit, and then died partly away again, still buzzing whinily. Harry thought it sounded like a cross between Dudley and a fly, except that the lights seemed to be working harder.

He hauled back on the cart carrying his trunk to stop it and looked around worriedly, much as most of the other people in the station were doing, and then glanced at the Weasley family, expecting Mrs. Weasley to shoo him and her own children comfortingly on ahead. Instead, she was looking alternately at Mr. Weasley and anxiously around at the crowd. 

She was probably worried that the small scroll in her husband's hand, or more likely the miniature quill pen that was scribbling independently on it while he watched with a tiny furrow between his eyebrows, might attract attention.

"Mr. Weasley?" he asked a bit uncertainly. 

Ginny was bolder. "Dad, what's going on?" 

"There is a problem with the city's ellipticity-- eclecticism-- el--" 

"Electricity," Harry said under his breath. He had gotten _that_ far on his own, never mind the scroll.

"Electricity. One that is magical in nature." Mr. Weasley looked grave. "This is serious, very serious. A matter for investigation. I -- shoo! All of you! You mustn't miss your train. I have to --" 

"Come with me. Right now," a disembodied voice muttered apologetically from somewhere nearby. Harry jumped. "I'm terribly sorry about showing up like this, -- er -- not showing up like this -- but I had to Apparate here and didn't dare be seen. It's terribly urgent." 

"I can see that -- it must be --" The lights dimmed again. "Ginny, boys, go on. Quickly now." 

"Do you have Muggle transportation? Something inconspicuous?" the voice asked anxiously. 

"Yes, yes, come on!" Mr. Weasley reached as if to take hold of the voice's arm, thought better of it, and began walking very quickly back in the direction of the car. This was not the original enchanted car, which was still running wild in the Forbidden Forest, but it _did_ have a few magical tweaks to make it easier for a wizard to drive. Also to prevent it from falling apart, which usually seemed imminent. It had been very affordable, and there was good reason for this.

Harry noticed that Mr. Weasley did not mention the enchantments on the car. But of course he wouldn't. The invisible voice must be someone else from the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office. Harry wasn't quite sure whether power outages resulting from magic were necessarily the result of the misuse of Muggle artifacts, but obviously someone thought so if they were putting Mr. Weasley on the case.

Mrs. Weasley patted his shoulder, then caught Ron's and Fred's and herded them all gently in the direction of the barrier. "You'd all better go. The train leaves in a few minutes. I have to get back to your father." She glanced over her shoulder, then up at the clock. "Quick! Go go go! Be careful! Don't forget to carry a handkerchief and brush your teeth! Remem--" 

Her voice faded out as Harry, leaning into his cart, charged onto the platform. They had all run this time, even though they were used to it enough not to be nervous.

*****

"It's good to see yeh all again," Hagrid said happily, dusting off seats covered in some sort of tawny fur and gesturing expansively for his guests to be seated. 

The Hogwarts Express was on a slightly different schedule this year, an experimental one so that there was some time between the Sorting and dinner for the first-years to unpack in the appropriate dormitories and freshen themselves up. Everyone else had had little trouble settling rapidly into their rooms again, so Ron, Harry, and Hermione were taking advantage of the interval to visit the gamekeeper.

"What's your latest monster, Hagrid?" Ron asked a little warily, watching a tuft of fur drift into a candleflame. 

"Oh, yeh'll like this one! Come out, Kiffy...." The gruff voice crooned coaxingly as Hagrid looked behind a long bench and patted a sheeted lump until it padded out into the open. The three students were just beginning to be apprehensive about the size when Hagrid turned the sheet back tenderly and a human face looked up at them dolefully from a lion's enormous golden body. 

"A _sphinx_?" Hermione asked incredulously. 

"Isn' she a _beauty_?" Hagrid asked fondly. "The poor thing's mute, though. Can' ask riddles. Makes her awful depressed sometimes." 

Indeed, the lovely head was drooping as the mouth moved soundlessly. 

"That might be just as well," Hermione muttered. "If it started throwing people off walls.... I wonder if she could ask visual riddles, though?" she speculated. 

Hagrid, who had just begun to look offended at the implication that his beloved pet might fling people from walls, brightened at the thought of visual riddles. "Like rebus puzzles, yeh mean?" 

The sphinx's head lifted too, light in its gold-brown eyes as they turned adoringly to Hermione. Hermione gulped. 

"You, ah, might want to keep her indoors, though. She, ah, might --" 

Seeing Hermione flounder, Ron suggested brightly, "She might not be able to tell who can fly or bounce and who can't, and you'd hate for her to make a mistake." 

Hagrid looked at Kiffy regretfully, then heaved a sigh. "They're right, gel. Yeh'll have to stay indoors mostly. I'll be sure an' try to give yeh _some_ chances ter run, though." Kiffy rubbed her head against his knee as if the thought of being an indoor sphinx was a perfectly acceptable one. He sniffed a bit, then shook his head quickly. "I'm sorry. Here I am not even offering yeh any tea." 

Harry thought that he might have been happier if the tea had been Hagrid's usual rather than tasting vaguely of spinach. He was thirsty from the wizard candy he'd torn into on the train, though, and with his throat parched the time until dinner in the Great Hall stretched before him as a much longer wait than it really was. 

"Say, Ron," he asked suddenly, his throat moistened and his mind now in search of some distraction from the flavor, "did -- did you ever get your wand repaired?" He suspected it could be an awfully embarrassing question, especially if the answer was no, but this was about as much privacy with the best guarantee of Draco Malfoy _not_ showing up as they were likely to get. 

"I _think_ so." Ron drew his wand out and held it up for inspection. "The Spellotape wasn't working, but I didn't want to have to go back to Ollivander's -- so I lined the broken parts up really carefully and wrapped it in duck tape." There was indeed a band a few inches wide around the middle, where the break had been, that had a luster and color pattern reminiscent of duck feathers. 

"Smart, that was!" Hagrid said approvingly. "Spellotape's not meant for wood. But yeh can fix _anything_ with duck tape." He paused to consider. "Well, almost." 

"Then you think it should work now?" Ron looked hopefully at his wand. "I haven't had a chance to test it, yet." 

"Yeah, should work just fine! Except on healin' spells. Yeh won't want ter use it for that." 

"Why not?" 

Hagrid nodded darkly at the wand. "Don't yeh know what a quack can do ter a healin'?"

"A... quack?" Ron blinked. "It quacks?"

"Muggles call fake doctors 'quacks,'" Harry explained. 

"Or real ones who are just incompetent," Hermione added.

"Really?" Hagrid said with interest. "Musta got it from us somehow, then. Do a spell, Ron. Yeh've done a feather before, right?" He fished one off the floor and laid it on the table.

"First year...." Ron eyed the rather ragged feather, shrugged, and gestured with his repaired wand. "_Wingardium leviosa_." 

The feather rose into the air. The wand emitted a raucous quack, and Ron nearly dropped it.

"See," Hagrid said with some satisfaction. "That'd be why I didn' give yeh anythin' breakable. It's fine for everythin' else, but healin' doesn't work so well. None too good for stealth, either, ter tell the truth." He took a long gulp of his own tea, then looked from the cup to the students reproachfully. "Yeh could've told me the tea wasn' right! Let me fix some new." 

*****

Harry was walking back across the grounds from with Ron and Hermione, heading for the Great Hall and dinner, when Ron started and stared across the meadow at a small group of black-robed figures. "I think I heard Dad's voice...."

Harry and Hermione both looked. Harry shaded his eyes. "Well, let's go over there." 

"Should we?" Hermione asked worriedly. 

"Why not? It's Ron's father. And if they wanted to keep it secret -- whatever it is -- they wouldn't be meeting about it in the open with no precautions," Harry replied reasonably.

As they drew closer, something very strange became evident. While most of the group consisted of black-robed witches and wizards -- including Dumbledore, Mr. Weasley, Snape, and Professor McGonagall -- there was one woman there who did not fit. She didn't have a black robe. She was in _Muggle_ clothing. 

She was wearing blue jeans and a bright pink shirt; her dark hair was streaked with gray, and there was a peculiar sort of scarf draped over her shoulders. 

"What _is_ that thing?" Ron whispered. "It looks like a -- a leather boa or something." 

"You mean feather," Hermione hissed.

"Does that look feathery to you?!" 

Harry had his own thoughts on the subject, but didn't voice them; he waved at the other two to be quiet. He was busy listening.

"--Traced the problem to its source," Mr. Weasley was saying, "inside a Muggle home. We had to enter, of course. The family inside turned out to be _very_ agitated; it seems their child had been," he paused and pronounced the next word with careful emphasis, "_electrocuted_. By playing near one of the, the --" 

"Electrical outlets," the strange woman put in. Everyone looked at her.

"Electrical outlets," Mr. Weasley repeated. "One of the places they extract this electricity. It's really very ingenious!" He brought himself up short and damped down his enthusiasm. "But dangerous as well," he added. "Very dangerous. So they had had to take their child to the hospital, and when we arrived they were there as well as a neighbor who had apparently come to visit them for, ah, moral support." 

"I went over to house-sit, at first. They ran out without locking the door. Then I stayed." 

"Of course." Mr. Weasley took a deep breath. "We went to this outlet, and looked at it, and it appeared that the child had jammed some sort of small metal object into it. Now, this was a very delicate situation. First of all, as the child found out, metal objects _conduct_ this electricity. Second, well... I pried it out, very carefully of course, with my wand. Wood _doesn't_ conduct." This last was confided with considerable delight before he went sheepish and proceeded. "The other problem, you see, is that it turned out to be cursed. The object... was _this_."

He raised his wand solemnly, holding it very carefully horizontal. A small ring perched at the very end of it, glinting in the light and looking rather sinister.

"We used a Memory Charm on the family," he concluded, "and then were on our way."

"And none of this," Snape said acidly, "explains why you brought a Muggle to Hogwarts." 

"What's a Muggle?" the woman interrupted. 

The wizards all looked at her again.

"A Muggle," Dumbledore explained kindly, "is a nonmagical person. There's nothing really wrong with it; most people are, in fact. Some wizards can be a mite condescending about it, admittedly. Do forgive them. There are always the others such as Arthur here, who find it absolutely _amazing_ how you get along without magic." 

Harry suspected that her expression, which he couldn't see, was indescribable. 

"And WHY," Snape repeated, "since we are supposed to _avoid notice_ by Muggles, is there one here?" 

Mr. Weasley looked unhappy. "Because... she is somehow connected to the charm on the ring. We may need to analyze it more extensively, and going back for her if that became necessary would have been very awkward." 

There was a brief silence.

"It was my mother's. Just a cheap trinket-type ring. Something her boyfriend gave her when she was nineteen -- he left without even knowing she was pregnant, so she wasn't especially attached to it, and it was in a box of toy-type junk I gave to my neighbors." She looked sad about that. "I didn't realize there was something he could hurt himself on."

At this point the leathery-looking scarf shifted on her shoulders, and Ron shouted, drawing looks of astonishment from some of the professors. "SNAKE! That's a snake! Watch out, it's trying to kill her!" 

He ran forward -- Harry tried to grab him, but missed -- and pointed his wand, gabbling a spell hastily that for once went in the right direction, demonstrating the efficacy of the duck tape. 

The snake stiffened, then slid from the woman's shoulders in a limp coil, feebly trying to catch itself. She caught it and rounded on Ron furiously. "What do you think you're _doing_? Rex is my _pet_; he wasn't trying to hurt me!"

Ron looked dazed. "You... have... a pet snake? ...Doesn't it bite?" 

"He could, but he won't. King snake, though. No venom," she snapped, dropping to her knees and cradling the serpent, hissing softly to it in between soothing, apologetic murmurs. 

"_Why?_" Ron asked incredulously. "Why what?" "Why would you want a pet _snake_?" Jessica raised her head for a moment and said coolly, "Because." Then she turned back to making soothing noises at her pet, obviously not planning to give any further explanation. 

"_Parselmouth?_ Is she -- did your dad bring back a _Muggle Parselmouth_?" Hermione muttered incredulously to Ron at the next hiss. "Is that even possible? Wait -- Harry? Is she really speaking Parseltongue?"

Harry listened intently. "I don't think so," he said after a moment. "Just a second...." He eyed the snake and asked _it_, just in case he wasn't understanding it as well from the Muggle woman, and then shook his head and reported, "It -- er, Rex -- says he doesn't really understand her."

"Well, he's doing about as well as us wizards, then." 

Harry blinked. He _must_ have been hearing things; he could have sworn that mutter was from one of the professors, and it sounded like Snape. "Er -- that is, he says she's mostly speaking gibberish. She says something halfway intelligible every once in a while, but it usually seems to be pretty much an accident." 

"Oh." Everyone relaxed slightly, except for the Muggle woman, who was still fussing over her pet. 

She looked up after a moment, as the snake began to revive after a counterspell from Dumbledore, and stared straight at Harry. "Did you just talk to Rex?"

"I -- yes. I'm -- a Parselmouth." He paused, then remembered she was a Muggle and added, rather lamely, "It means I can talk serpent-language. Um... I'm Harry Potter, and this is Ron Weasley, and this is Hermione Granger. Ron didn't mean to hurt your pet, really. He thought it was attacking you." 

She sighed, looked down at Rex, then looked up again and offered a hand. "Jessica Blake. And I'm having the strangest day of my life; sorry if I'm a little off." 

"It is kind of strange here at first. Nice, though." Only she couldn't stay, could she? "Can we help any?" Harry looked up at Dumbledore hopefully, and received a nod of permission as the other adults turned toward each other in conference.

Jessica Blake looked back over her shoulder, then sighed. "Well, everyone else seems too distracted to be informative.... Answer a few questions?"

"If I can," Harry replied carefully.

"Are you really a Muggle?" Hermione broke in, before Jessica could ask any. "I can't believe Mr. Weasley brought you here...." Harry wondered what Hermione would think of the enchanted car. On second thought, he didn't. 

"Is it just me, or does 'Muggle' sound very rude?"

Harry somehow didn't think that had been what Jessica had originally planned to ask them.

"Oh, no," Ron interrupted eagerly. "It's just the regular word. There are insulting ones, but some people will insult _anything_. Slytherins especially." He paused, looked down at the snake in her lap, and looked daunted.

"Like what?" 

"They're against Muggle-born students being allowed to matriculate, for one thing," Hermione said coldly, though quietly, with a glance at Snape. "They refer to it as having dirty blood. Mudblood."

Jessica frowned. Ron grimaced at the term and then snorted audibly. "It's not like that makes any sense. Hermione's parents are Muggles and she's one of the best students here."

Hermione sniffed. "_One of_?" 

"It's really annoying," Ron added blithely. "Anyway, it's just stupid people who use that. Most wizards have Muggle in them not too far back, even if they won't admit to it." 

Jessica -- Harry wasn't sure if he ought to call her that, since she seemed to be about Mr. and Mrs. Weasley's age, but he wasn't sure whether she was a Miss or a Mrs. Blake and she somehow _seemed_ like a Jessica -- looked slightly bewildered. 

He could understand this. It seemed to be the practice when bringing someone in from the Muggle world to Hogwarts to dump information over their heads and just hope some of it stuck. And being a Muggle, she probably did feel a little insulted by some of it. He didn't mind insulting some Muggles, but she wasn't like the Dursleys. She talked to him -- and Ron and Hermione -- like people, even if she was a little irritable. 

"Like I said... it's confusing here, but nice," he said aloud. "I guess you'll be here for dinner -- it ought to start soon -- just watch out for the Slytherins."

"Slytherins?"

Harry looked down at Rex. Jessica was stroking beside one of the unblinking eyes. 

"They're one of the houses. Their symbol's a snake, but you don't want to sit with them." Gryffindors might look askance at the pet serpent, but Harry didn't even want to _think_ about sending a perfectly nice Muggle to Draco Malfoy's table. 

"Actually, Harry, I believe we shall seat her amongst the professors, as our guest," Dumbledore announced, "while we continue trying to fathom her connection to this ring." 

The ring glittered without comment from the end of the wand.

*****


	2. I Remember That Age

_Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction based on the Harry Potter books by J. K. Rowling. No claim is made on the characters or setting, and no material profit is intended or expected._

**Who We Are 2/3  
by Persephone**

*****

"Is she really a Muggle, Harry?"

"And is she really a Parselmouth?"

The conspicuously-dressed woman seated between Dumbledore and Snape, McGonagall across from her, was the occasion for much comment and speculation over the night's feast, and not just because Rex had now arranged himself as a hat and kept trying to eat Professor Snape's dinner.

(Jessica, furiously embarrassed, finally hissed her exasperation unintelligibly at her pet and finished her meal one-handed, the other clamped firmly on the back of the serpent's neck.)

"Yes, she's really a Muggle, and no, she's not a Parselmouth." At least _these_ were questions Harry could answer with fair certainty, unlike "What's going on?" and "How long is she going to stay?" The latter two were also popular.

"Doesn't she have a _job_, then?" Colin Creevey asked dubiously. "Or a family to wonder where she is?"

Or that. "I didn't ask," Harry admitted. He hadn't _thought_ to ask. "But Mr. Weasley's nice. If she asked, he would've given her a chance to call people and tell them she would be gone." 

"Still," Colin began, but he never finished. While his mouth was still open, a thunderclap shook the air and a sinister, inky green-cast black slunk across the enchanted ceiling to blot out the stars.

There was dead silence for a moment, and then it was broken by a low moaning wind carrying a high cackle that made Harry's hair stand on end, even more than usual. A stabbing pain lanced into his scar, and pandemonium broke out.

Some people huddled together, some dived under the tables, and some fainted. A few scrambled for the door, whether to get away or see what was happening Harry didn't know. His head hurt so that he couldn't think; he stumbled and then, finding he couldn't see, stumbled farther. He heard the professors shouting for order and voices calling his name, but when he tried to turn and look for them someone bumped into him; he fell, barking his knees hard on something on the way down.

Harry climbed to his feet using the chair he'd just fallen over as a prop and kept going, groping ahead of himself to keep from running into anything else. 

Finally, he found a wall, then an edge, felt around it, and half-fell through the outer door while someone going the other way ran into him and tried to grab him and pull him inside.

The slap of cool air on his face knocked the hot pains in his forehead back just far enough for him to look around and realize that he had just been very stupid. 

The professors were all outdoors. Jessica, looking very confused, seemed to have been swept along with them and was now being chivvied back behind the wizards. 

The other students were inside, as many as could fit crowded against the windows with faces full of horror. More, no doubt, cowered further in or were trying to push to the window. 

Obviously some of them had been out and gotten sent back in. Draco was propelled past as Harry backed up slowly until he could feel the edge of the doorjamb again. 

"Harry!" Ron's voice reached out to him, hoarse with fear and followed by the sound of running feet. "Harry, get back in -- oof!" Apparently he had encountered Draco.

Dumbledore turned at that sound. "HARRY," he thundered, "GO BACK INSIDE!" 

Harry tried. He really did. Dumbledore's voice finally shook him into faster motion than creeping, and he let go of the doorframe and turned around to go back through it. He felt something -- Dumbledore's wand, maybe -- push him forward.

Ron, having gotten past Malfoy, appeared and reached out to yank him in.

The door slammed shut. Ron barely avoided being caught in it. Harry came to an abrupt stop with his nose against the wood. 

Then, reaching into his pocket to grip his wand tightly, he turned around to face the owner of the screeching cackle that rose into the night sky.

"Voldemort," he whispered. Harry had recognized the shrill voice; the billowing black shape with the white face and eyes like burning coals was merely confirmation. 

"Yeeesssssss." The word was one drawn-out hiss, no louder than a breath but all too clear. "I have been waiting to see you again, Harry Potter."

Harry kept his eyes on the red ones, swallowing dry-throated with terror, and forced himself to walk slowly forward to join the professors. Inside obviously wasn't an option, but he didn't want to stay standing all by himself. "You must," he said as steadily as he could, "be very bored."

Dumbledore's eyes glinted approvingly at that, and Jessica, though almost as pale as Voldemort, gave him a quick smile as he reached them. On second thought, he moved a little bit away from Jessica, just in case. She couldn't defend herself, after all. Snape moved sideways to stand between Harry and Voldemort, and incidentally away from Rex's attempt to taste his hair. 

Another sharp laugh snapped out like a whip, this one more angry than triumphant. "You still think you can defy me, do you?" The red gaze swept over the assembled professors and glanced off the windowpanes. "Do all of you? You are wrong! I have returned, with more power than ever before!" Lightning crackled around Voldemort as he gestured with a slender wand that made Harry's twitch. 

_"...Its brother gave you that scar.... Yes, thirteen-and-a-half inches. Yew."_

Harry thought, behind his throbbing scar, that he liked holly better.

He caught a snatch of conversation off to one side. "--Ministry?" McGonagall was saying anxiously.

"Can't." Flitwick gave the cloudcover a quick, jerky look. "Communications barrier -- travel too -- maybe broomstick but that's too slow. He's sealed us in." 

"But how...?" McGonagall broke off, lips pressed together.

Harry felt a chill. Voldemort had been barely alive; how could he have gotten that much power all of a sudden? 

Snape started muttering something. Then his teeth suddenly clicked together, a strangled sound clogging in his throat, as Voldemort's eyes gleamed brighter red at him.

Voldemort went on in that horrible voice. "You will not escape me again. Especially you, boy. So arrogant, at that age. I remember that age." He gestured carelessly with the wand held in one claw-like hand, and Harry peered around Snape, eyes widening, as a boy his own age -- maybe some months younger, but not much -- materialized at the edge of the fluttering black shadow. 

He was several inches shorter and significantly thinner than when Harry had seen him in the diary, but the hair and the features marked him unmistakably as Tom Riddle.

"You have seen me as I was before. Not so long ago, in fact," the voice went on. There was enough hiss in it that Harry wondered fleetingly whether Voldemort might be speaking Parseltongue, and no one else could understand him. Then Harry decided that it really didn't matter and forgot all about it. 

"You thwarted my memory. But I was weak, then, compared to now. Almost nothing. Something, of course, not so weak as _this_, as I was before I discarded your petty concerns and learned how to grasp _power_." At the word "_this_," Voldemort flicked his wand again at the image of Tom Riddle, who looked offended.

The professors began talking, but their words faded into a hum and buzz in Harry's ears. They might have been arguing with Voldemort or preparing an attack, but nobody seemed to be speaking directly to Harry, and he didn't think they'd be likely to include him anyway. He was staring at the image, a boy just younger than himself, so hard that everything else around him blurred while he tried to figure out what struck him as important about it.

Voldemort had created it. Harry tried to call the wand motions to mind -- they'd looked like standard ones for illusion, maybe a bit different, but he only knew the basic shape from observation and illustrations in History of Magic. There were probably variations. So that didn't help. 

Then there had been that second gesture, but Harry _thought_ that had only been like pointing a finger, not another spell. Then Tom had --

Harry's heart seemed to leap up into his throat and stop there. Tom had looked offended. That was what had riveted his attention on the image -- or, as he was starting to suspect, _not_ just an image. Wizard photos might move and show personality, but even so, glaring at him just didn't seem like what Voldemort would have wanted an illusion to do when he insulted it -- Voldemort would want it to look meek, or cower, or something, not glare at him. 

But looking offended was just what Harry imagined somebody _would_ do, if they were proud and not too afraid to do anything.

Somebody. 

Just how real _was_ that image? 

"So." His voice cracked, and Harry swallowed hard as the burning red eyes swung to look at him. "That's you at age twelve, right?" he croaked.

"Yes." The words dripped scorn onto the cold grass. "Tom Riddle. Still a puling, conscience-ridden little boy who hadn't yet rid himself of his Muggle taint --" 

Snape scowled and shifted a bit, trying to push his least favorite student back into greater shelter. McGonagall seized his shoulder and propelled him next to Jessica, which was irritating since he'd just moved away from her on purpose. 

Still, Harry felt a surge of triumph. Energy still crackled in the air, and Voldemort's wand still pointed in Riddle's general direction. The agreement -- and the words that followed, however spiteful -- could only make the image _more_ real. 

But what good would it do? Doubt shook him; the image was still Voldemort's creation, or summoning, or whatever it was, no matter how much personality it showed. Right?

Or was that right? Something turned over in Harry's mind and clicked into place, although he wasn't quite sure what it was. It told him that the Houses and their founders were one of the important things to think about, though.

Rex reared his head with a loud spitting hiss that began in imprecations Harry didn't even know the English words for and ended with "--How _dare_ you; the taint issss _yourssssssssssssssss_ if it issssss anyone'sssss. Fool. My human issss better by far than you ever could desssire to be." It went on for some time; Harry wished Rex would be quiet before Voldemort decided to blast him or something. 

Voldemort -- Tom Riddle had been in Slytherin. It didn't look as if he'd always been evil, or even as nasty as Draco Malfoy. All right, so being as nasty as Draco took some doing in itself. 

But however most of them seemed to act, the qualifications for Slytherin didn't actually say anything about being cruel. Or going Dark, even if it seemed to be more likely for them. Harry tried to remember the Sorting Hat's rhymes. Something about cunning, and willing to do anything to get ahead.... It had mentioned real friends, too, which wasn't something he usually associated with Slytherin.

That was interesting.

Voldemort was, rather to Harry's astonishment, just coming back with something about traitors who ate other serpents, which Rex was returning in greater intensity regarding those who turned on their own kind even within a species, when Jessica took an angry step forward.

"You insult those of us without magic and the wizards descended from them," she said coldly. "You call us treacherous and worthless." Harry wondered frantically _when_ Voldemort had said that in her hearing. It must have been when he hadn't been listening. "But _you_ aren't the least bit better. Most of the rest of what you've done I can only guess at, but you certainly didn't seem to have any trouble betraying my mother."

Her _mother_? What would Voldemort ever have had to do with her mother?

"Your _mother_, mudling?" Voldemort hissed. Harry gathered he didn't know either. "I seriously doubt your mother could have had even enough importance to me to bother betraying. Unless perhaps you're a Squib?" 

Squibs would certainly seem to complicate the Slytherin obsession with "purebloods." Of course, in theory, so should the fact that one of Slytherin's descendants had apparently married a Muggle. 

Harry tried to drag his thoughts back on track. What had Dumbledore said Salazar Slytherin looked for? Parseltongue, but that was rare. _"Resourcefulness -- determination -- a certain disregard for rules."_ Harry wasn't quite sure any of that would help here, although he supposed it all might be important. What really defined Slytherins?

Jessica's eyes were icy. "It certainly seems that way. Important enough to go about with for a little while. Important enough to talk to and pretend to be friends until you had better things to do. Or worse, I should say. Important enough to leave and never contact her again when she was pregnant with me." 

Everyone stopped and stared at Jessica for the third time that night. Even Voldemort's stark-white face looked startled, and Tom Riddle's mouth dropped open as he swung to face her in shock. A hush fell so heavily that Harry fleetingly imagined his churning thoughts would be overheard.

The hat had mentioned greatness, and proving himself. Anything to get ahead. Cleverness. Selfishness? 

The something in his head turned itself over again, and settled more comfortably. Apparently it had been upside-down before. 

"Are you trying," that high, cold voice finally said threateningly, "to tell me that I have a Muggle daughter?"

There had been a little bit of a lecture before the Sorting this time, on the founders and the houses and what they might have been told and what was accurate. Another word popped into his head now, from that talk. 

"Hi," Jessica replied sarcastically. Harry couldn't blame her; Voldemort wasn't sounding particularly quick on the uptake for someone who was supposed to have been one of Hogwarts's top students back in his day. 

Even Tom gave Voldemort a slightly annoyed look, even as the dark wizard sneered, "What a pity. I should have hoped if I had the misfortune to father a Muggle's child I'd at least have had some influence. You seem to have turned out a typical Muggle -- mundane, useless, thoughtless, cruel --" 

Harry blinked, momentarily distracted. Voldemort used "cruel" as if he didn't approve of it? But maybe that had seeped across from Tom Riddle, or his memories; the sixteen-year-old one from the diary might have gone Dark, but he probably hadn't entirely made up the apprehension about going back to the Muggle orphanage for the summer... not if it had happened to be run by anyone like the Dursleys, certainly. 

And the twelve-year-old Tom was nodding unconscious agreement. 

Harry thought about the rest of what Voldemort had said when he'd confirmed that the "image" was himself at twelve years old. Conscience-ridden. Before he abandoned _their_ concerns. He looked straight at Tom and shook his head a little bit, catching the other boy's eye. _They aren't all like that,_ he thought as hard as he could, wishing there were some way he could actually convey it without Voldemort noticing.

It wouldn't be easy. This Tom was Voldemort's creature, literally, at the moment. 

Harry swallowed and clung to his conclusion. 

_Individualism._ If any one thing characterized Slytherins, it was a strong sense of self. That left a lot of room to be nasty, granted, but the _point_ was....

Tom Riddle had already been Sorted.

And Harry suspected Voldemort, in his arrogance at the _progress_ he'd made since then and his scorn for anyone who bothered with such paltry concerns as good and evil, had forgotten the significance of that. 

"There are some people who are like that," Jessica replied savagely, "'Muggle' and wizard alike. And then there are people like my _real_ father, who married my mother and loved us both so much that I couldn't understand it when I eventually heard of anyone resenting a child for being someone else's by birth." Had Tom just barely flinched when she mentioned love? "It's too bad you seem to have met the worse variety outside your wizard-world, but it's worse that you decided to pattern yourself on them." 

Harry saw Tom waver and look stricken by those words, and decided this was his chance. Heart pounding, he sidled away from the protective adults until he could lock eyes with the younger figure at the edge of the shadow and whispered, hoping desperately that Voldemort was paying too much attention to Jessica to listen, "You don't _have_ to." 

It was only then that he had the horrifying thought that Voldemort's attention just might take the form of death.

But the Dark Lord was speaking instead. "Foolish little Muggle. I could annihilate you with a _thought_." 

Harry breathed a sigh of relief and realized that Tom was still staring at him, even though his own eyes had flickered from him to Jessica to Voldemort and back. The boy in shadows mouthed -- or whispered, but if so the sound didn't carry -- "What do you mean? They're all awful." 

Not the most encouraging statement, but at least he was interested.

"Could you?" Jessica snapped. 

Harry winced. _Shut up, shut up, yes he could._

"Of course," Voldemort purred malevolently. Harry's neck prickled at the sound, and he wished Voldemort would go back to malevolent hissing.

"You're not even as impressive as what 'Muggles' come up with when we _imagine_ things about magic," Jessica retorted. She was shaking. 

"Such as?" Still purring. 

"Sauron Annatar," Jessica replied after visibly casting about in her mind. "From _Lord of the Rings_." 

Voldemort threw his head back and gave vent to a long screeching laugh. "Ring-giver, is that it? Your mother must be the one who insisted on telling me about that story. So very... _inspiring_. You'd think she'd have known better when I offered _her_ one." 

So _that_ was where the cursed ring had come from! Harry saw Tom glance up and wince a little at the high-pitched laugh. "They aren't," he mouthed back, realizing Tom wouldn't be able to hear him and he might as well not give Voldemort a chance to. "Not all of them. I've met some really nice Muggles. Hermione's parents, for instance." 

Tom's eyebrows drew together in an expression of sudden puzzlement, and Harry realized he had probably lost him on that last part and shook his head slightly again. "Hermione" was not an easy thing to lip-read if you didn't know the name. _Never mind._

"So that thing was _your_ doing?" Jessica asked coldly. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised." 

"And just what," Dumbledore added in a deceptively light tone, "did you think you were going to do with it?"

Harry jumped at Dumbledore's voice and stole a quick glance in the Headmaster's direction. He and all the other professors Harry could see were looking at Voldemort, not at Tom. Could Tom's apparent reality be some sort of trap? Something the professors would ignore and let past their defenses through inattention? At least Harry was watching. 

More of that awful laughter. Harry privately resolved never again to drag fingernails or chalk over a blackboard to set Ron's teeth on edge. "Why, it was an experiment. I thought I'd see if I could drain the life-energy from Muggles and put it to some useful purpose." 

Or could the image be something Voldemort hoped the Hogwarts professors would try to rescue and thus make themselves vulnerable to him? Perhaps by feeding Tom -- and hence Voldemort -- energy? 

Now there was a chilling thought. Harry looked back at Tom and took a deep breath. He thought the image of Tom was real, or at least could be. 

If this turned out to be a trap... he was going to fall for it. 

"Listen." He dared to put a sound to the words this time, just barely. "My name's Harry Potter, but if I'm right you don't really know me. I'm not going to say, 'Listen to me.' You don't even know me. Listen to _him_. Look at him. Is that what you want to be?" 

"Of course, I was quite young at the time, comparatively ignorant, and it was somewhat impulsive. Not a terribly well-done spell, as such things go." Voldemort sounded amused and vaguely scornful. "I wasn't even certain if Muggles _had_ enough energy to be worth stealing, so I made it a very _gentle_ drain, just to reduce the odds of their instantly keeling over. Unfortunately that made it absurdly slow." 

Jessica's voice was still furious, but a little less tense. Perhaps she'd realized that if the charm was slow-acting, at least it shouldn't have done the child _too_ much harm. Less than the electrical outlet, at any rate. "Is that all my mother was to you? A chance to charge up your little enchanted battery?"

"Of course not," Voldemort replied irritably. "I told you it was somewhat impulsive. No, I kept company with your mother because I was still associated with Hogwarts, and," here he grinned horribly at Dumbledore, "I thought that a Muggle girlfriend might make me look less suspicious to certain parties. It even appeared to have worked, for a time." Another sickening grin. "Besides, it seemed _time_ that the wizard do the leaving."

Harry could practically _feel_ Jessica fuming, and Tom's expression had... wavered... again at Voldemort's last sentence, now appearing trapped between disgust and agreement. "So is this about your father?" he whispered urgently. "Is that it? You said he left because your mother was a witch. So _he_ does the same thing, but planned, to somebody who never hurt him -- how's that better?"

"But the experiment worked beyond my wildest imaginings, ultimately," Voldemort added, laughing again. Harry's skin crawled. Voldemort kept on _talking_... with a chill, Harry realized the Dark wizard was dawdling. He'd decided to _play_ with them. "Little enough energy came in from the Muggles, as I discovered when I tried it as a source to return myself to life from shadow -- but I left it alone again, and then -- the floodgates burst! As if power actually poured through it _voluntarily_ -- until I seized on it, of course, and even then it came easily." 

The electrical outlet. So Voldemort had come back on Muggle electricity. 

But that could hardly be a normal power source for a wizard, even a Dark wizard. If he had a lot of unfamiliar power, could that explain making mistakes like putting too much of it into making something meant to be a mirage?

The blood was pounding in his ears again; Jessica's voice and those of Voldemort and the other wizards rose to a dull, formless roar, with Rex's angry hissing laced through it. Harry didn't understand a word. But he heard Tom's faint answering whisper very clearly: "He made me." 

"Voldemort? He _was_ you, once. He made you from a memory. But he overdid it. You're him the way he used to be, but you're separate," Harry whispered back under the roar. "He says you're from before he turned to the Dark Arts. Aren't you?" 

A nod -- and not a lying one, either; Harry thought he knew real fear when he saw it. 

Dumbledore's words came back suddenly from when Harry had asked him, fearfully, whether he had really belonged in Slytherin instead of Gryffindor. _"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we really are, far more than our abilities."_

Riddle had chosen Slytherin. But that didn't mean he had to choose the Dark Arts, surely. 

"It's the choices we make," Harry continued softly, "that show who we are. That _define_ who we are. Not what we _can_ do. What we do." He swallowed, hoping his heart would get out of his throat and go back where it belonged. 

Tom hesitated. "What about my father?"

"What about him?" 

"I lost my mother -- she died pining away for a man who didn't even care enough to stay with her." The whisper was almost a hiss, but not quite; Harry hoped Tom wouldn't slip into Parseltongue -- that could hardly escape Voldemort's notice. It was furious, but pained -- Harry looked into the green eyes opposite his own and saw _She loved him more than me and he didn't care about either of us._ What did Tom see in his?

Harry bit his lip. "What do you really know about him? He left. But how? Did he just hate the idea of magic? Or did he maybe not trust her, if she'd kept that much of a secret for that long? Maybe he left for a walk to deal with it, and something kept him from going back. Maybe they argued and he walked out and didn't think she'd take him back and they were both too proud to ask." His imagination seemed to be in good order, at least. "I don't know. Maybe that. Maybe he was as bad as you think. Maybe it was one of the other things. But his choices made _him_. You get your own." He took a deep breath. "You get a second chance. I saw how you looked at Voldemort. If that's not what you want to be, reject him. Take the energy. He went too far; he forgot you'd be _yourself_, not him. _You could be the real one._"

_The temptation of Tom Riddle,_ Harry thought wildly. He hoped this one would stick.

Tom took a half-step closer. His eyes were riveted on Harry's now, in a stare half afraid and altogether fascinated. Harry suspected -- and hoped, truth be told, in case Voldemort looked -- that from outside, the intent gaze looked malevolent. "He is strong." 

"Not as strong as he thinks. You still have a conscience, don't you? You still care. You know falling to the Dark Arts is -- is morally weak no matter how much power you have." Harry suspected he sounded ridiculous, but it didn't seem to be bothering his audience. "He thinks you're weak because you haven't started using them yet. He's wrong. He's forgotten that's not what it takes." 

"If he's forgotten," Tom whispered, "then how can I be what you're saying?" 

Ouch. Good question. Harry searched his mind frantically and came up with, "Because forgotten's not the right word. He still has the memories. He still knows what he was like, what you're like now, but he's so stuck on Dark Power and rot that he keeps himself from seeing it." 

"I don't know if I'm strong enough." But there was a gleam in Tom's eyes, and it wasn't red. 

"He put a lot of energy into you," Harry said slowly, shivering a little at the continued shouts and wishing the Hogwarts professors would do something besides yell. He suspected he'd actually gotten used to the pain in his scar, at least as long as Voldemort wasn't thinking about him.

Or maybe he didn't wish that; he realized Tom was getting more distinct still, and Voldemort was looking slightly less... fully there, and less impressive, but didn't yet seem to realize it. He'd known he should go ahead and fight Tom Riddle from the diary because that Riddle had been getting sharper and more distinct; maybe the professors could see Voldemort weakening and knew they should delay.

Or maybe the idea that they could do something was wishful thinking, though it seemed as if Dumbledore should be able to, or Voldemort wouldn't have feared him. Maybe that wasn't so much in direct combat.... 

If the professors couldn't help, then what Harry was about to do was even _more_ important. If they could... well, then maybe they were waiting for him, even if they didn't know it. 

"You've been taking more. I hadn't realized. I don't know what the balance is." Tom looked as much like a real person as any of Harry's classmates probably would, if _they_ had been standing in eerie shadows and the glow from sickly dancing lightning. "I --" He gulped. This could be a disaster if he happened to be wrong. "I'll give you some of mine to help."

Tom's eyes widened. "Why?"

"Because I'd rather have you than... him." At this point, even Harry wasn't going to use Voldemort's name. Not out of superstition, but because of the very real possibility that it might get his attention at a crucial moment. "Are you going to try? I'll help, but only if you try."

Tom half-turned to look up at his older self -- his future, or possible future -- snake-nosed, red-eyed, chalk-white face contorted in hatred. 

The fist clenched around Harry's heart released it and let his chest fill with a burst of relief as Tom shuddered in horror and turned back, looking sick. 

But tantalized. The fist seized again, but lightly, undecided. _Tantalized. By what?_

"I don't want to be him," Tom whispered so fiercely that Harry was tempted to shush him before he could be overheard. "I don't want to be -- that. I've never wanted to be a Dark wizard." He was so tense he was trembling. "I don't know where I -- where he went wrong, but I don't want to do it again. And I'm _me_. He'll want to reabsorb me so I won't be anymore. But I _am_." The same appearance of earnestness as the deceitful sixteen-year-old version, but none of the smoothness of the lies. This was real. 

"Good." Harry swallowed. "I _think_ you're almost in balance." A shaky breath. "Let me tip it." 

Then he closed his eyes and for the first time _looked_ for the connection just behind his scar, where Voldemort had accidentally handed over a little of his power -- _That's starting to sound like a habit. I hope!_ -- and where the pain came with the Dark wizard's anger. He found Voldemort and shied away just a bit, treading carefully until he found the connection from Voldemort to... Tom. 

It was similar enough to reinforce the idea that Tom had his own identity, too, instead of being a terrifyingly skillful example of puppetry. 

Tom was still part of the same set of life-energy, though, even if the early years of the soul seemed to have fissioned or duplicated or something. Harry was connected to him too, even though it was going to be very, very hard to hit just the connection to Tom and not the one to Voldemort. 

It occurred to him to open his eyes and meet Tom's anxious ones again, and suddenly it wasn't difficult anymore. 

Harry carefully began feeding a thin trickle of his own power and life-energy over to Tom, watching the connections to Voldemort warily for any activity. Nothing seemed to change.

None of the professors would approve of this, surely. Harry stopped when he started to feel too tired to concentrate, hoping desperately that this would be enough, and that he hadn't made some horrible mistake. 

He tuned back in to his surroundings just in time to see Voldemort simultaneously raise his wand toward Jessica... and make a grasping motion toward Tom with his free hand, trying to gather him back in. The world seemed to slide dreadfully sideways as Harry tried to leap to save Jessica but found he couldn't; the energy he'd given away had slowed him and Voldemort was going to take it all back in --

"_Avada Ked_--" 

"I REJECT YOU!" Tom screamed the words, voice cracking almost as high as Voldemort's, as he leaped _towards_ Voldemort, not away, and his fingers wrapped around the wand. His wand. 

There was a violent blast of energy, black and green and streaks of bright clean gold all in a shattering bolt of lightning that formed between the two and then exploded. Tom staggered back but kept his feet, crying over the accompanying thunderclap, "I'm not you and never will be!" 

And Voldemort gave a shrill, agonized wail as he burst into a swirl of black rags and then slowly dissipated, all the life yanked out of him with Tom's convulsive clutch at the wand. 

The silence as the scream died was almost breathtaking. No one moved for a few seconds, and then Albus Dumbledore looked up as the roiling green-black in the sky slowly broke up and disappeared. "I see we've a clear night after all."

Everyone remembered to breathe again; there were muttered questions about "How did he DO that?" and answers ranging from a snippy "Did you forget why nobody wants to use his name?" to the conclusion that "It must have been the electricity" and an attempt to elicit a more technical explanation of electricity from the shaken Jessica. 

Dumbledore tapped Snape's lips with the end of his wand, and the Potions master gasped and then swallowed convulsively, grimacing and working his mouth as if to be sure it was still there. 

Harry stared at Tom, who was pale and trembling, hands both wrapped tightly around his wand, still standing next to the only one of the black rags that had floated to the ground and looking down at it as it slowly disintegrated. The grass under it looked unwell. "You did it." He'd meant to speak softly, and probably really had, but his voice sounded unnaturally loud. "You got rid of Voldemort. You're starting over." 

Tom looked up at him with a start. "You helped me." It sounded more confused than precisely grateful. 

"Well," Dumbledore said softly. He was looking at Tom now. "This is most interesting." 

"Isn't it." McGonagall's gaze followed his. 

"Indeed." Snape now. Tom was starting to look uneasy, though his own focus still seemed to be on Dumbledore.

"Voldemort screwed up," Harry announced. "He -- he underestimated what he was like before the Dark Arts. What he _could've_ been like. And Tom decided not to be like _him_, and by then he was strong enough to take over. Voldemort had grabbed a lot of life, enough to fuel two people for a while, but not to maintain it forever."

"A remarkable act of will," Dumbledore murmured.

"He's a Slytherin," Harry replied. "He wasn't going to let anybody keep him from being himself, not even his older self." 

It was only now that Harry realized many of the other students had silently filed back out of the Great Hall, though they were all staying well back. 

"I should think," Snape said waspishly, "that the same argument would apply in reverse. And Voldemort was more experienced." 

"Voldemort wasn't paying attention," Harry snapped back. Wait. Snape had said "Voldemort"? Should that surprise him?

"I believe the boy's right," Dumbledore remarked kindly. "Now, Tom." He walked over and tilted the boy's chin up, looking deep into his eyes as if, Harry thought, he could see straight through to the thoughts. Harry wasn't at all sure Dumbledore couldn't. "So you don't want to be a Dark wizard, eh?"

"N-no, sir."

"And what is it exactly that you did about this decision?"

"He -- he was how I grew up, wasn't he?" Tom looked miserable, and Harry wasn't sure whether it was from the thought of Voldemort or Dumbledore's penetrating stare. "He called me back up, though, the way he -- the way I was before. Am. I -- I'm twelve," he added a bit inanely. His eyes darted fleetingly from Dumbledore to Harry. "Harry said... that I could be the real one. That I didn't have to make the same choices. I could get to make my own if I could just get away from _him_. So I -- I did what he said. He gave me a little bit of his life so I'd have an advantage, and I grabbed the rest of the energy Voldemort had gathered and... and pulled." He managed to break away from Dumbledore's gaze again to look down at his white-knuckled grip on his wand. "And I grabbed my wand." 

"Your wand, hm?"

"It IS mine! I know it. And I -- when I got it -- I mean, he has it from when he was still _me_." 

Dumbledore chuckled gently, almost reassuringly. "True enough. And good thinking -- if very dangerous for you, Harry. Tom, what do you remember?"

"Remember?"

"Anything of Voldemort?"

Tom paled further and visibly turned inwards, trying to remember. "I don't know. Sir. I don't feel as if there's been any time, but I know there has, and there are some things...." His eyes squeezed shut, then opened again quickly. "I think I must remember a little. Nothing... nothing's clear, but it's like there's something there. Not... mine."

Dumbledore nodded thoughtfully, his keen gaze still searching Tom's face. "And what do you think you should be doing?"

Tom looked confused, then shook his head and looked even _more_ confused. "I... before this," he said slowly, releasing the wand with one hand to wave vaguely at the general area, "I -- as far as I know I should be about to start my second year at Hogwarts." He looked down at where the rag had been. "Please," he said carefully, "how long has it been?" 

"Since he was last who you are now? Since you last existed, or as close as may be to you when you've just had an experience like that?" Dumbledore's glasses shone softly in the moonlight, and his voice was gentle instead of almost sharp as he continued. "It's been just about fifty-four years." 

Tom paled still further as he raised his eyes to Dumbledore's again; Harry started to wonder if he was going to faint or if maybe it was a trick of the light. "What are you going to do with me?"

It almost could have been funny. The boy who had just reclaimed his life and left of Voldemort only a few pathetic rags obviously shared none of Voldemort's confidence about taking on the assembled wizards of Hogwarts, but waited nervously for their judgment. 

Dumbledore scrutinized Tom's eyes -- and soul, Harry fancied -- for a moment that stretched out unbearably. 

"Well," the headmaster said finally, his own blue eyes twinkling suddenly in the moonlight, "I believe you should be starting your second year at Hogwarts." 

There was a sort of strangled gasp from Tom. "You'll still let me --?" 

"Certainly! Your head's quite as much in need of filling as anyone else's, hm? And your stomach, too. Of course the personnel won't be quite as you remember, but you'll catch up soon enough." 

Dumbledore patted the boy's shoulder and directed everyone back inside with sweeping gestures. Harry stood still for a moment as the others streamed indoors. So did Tom.

If Dumbledore believed this was really Tom Riddle from _before_ he went bad, then everything really should be all right. 

"Thank you," Tom said after an interval of mutual staring. Harry suspected that he, at least, was personally staring largely because he was to tired to move yet.

"You're welcome." Maybe he wasn't that tired after all. He was feeling better, anyway. And his scar didn't hurt anymore. "Well, come on in," Harry said after a moment, breaking into a grin. "You haven't _quite_ missed dinner."

*****


	3. Continue Play

_Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction based on the Harry Potter books by J. K. Rowling. No claim is made on the characters or setting, and no material profit is intended or expected._

**Who We Are 3/3  
by Persephone**

*****

Things were, some weeks later, mostly settling down. Jessica had, of course, been sent home after finishing dinner in a rather shaken state; Harry wasn't entirely sure if she had been placed under a Memory Charm or not. He rather thought that it might be safer to leave her with some knowledge of the possibility that things she'd received from her mother just _might_ do something untoward.

Harry was being laden with homework. Tom Riddle was presumably also being laden with homework, if Harry recalled that particular segment of second year correctly. He thought it was probably a fairly safe bet. 

Not that he saw all that much of Tom. He was third year; Tom was second.... He was Gryffindor; Tom was Slytherin. He'd already been sorted, after all. But whenever Harry DID happen to run across Tom Riddle or hear the name mentioned... he remembered.

Hard to forget. And he sort of felt responsible for the other boy. 

There was a general, unavoidable air of suspicion about him, of course. He had been _You-Know-Who_, after all, although he had apparently not remembered that particular epithet and, on being barraged with it in conversation at some point, had finally snapped that no, he did NOT know who, and would they please just come out and tell him! 

During the stuttering that followed it had finally dawned on him, and his eyes had been shut as he walked away. 

Harry hadn't been in a position to go after him at the time, but he was still concerned. He _knew_ what it was like to have everyone suspect him -- most of the school had thought _he_ was the Heir of Slytherin for a while, and at least he'd been reasonably sure that he wasn't and VERY sure that he hadn't been attacking people. It had still been very unpleasant.

And somehow, he suspected that there weren't any equivalents to Fred and George Weasley in Slytherin, much less to Ron and Hermione. They'd been the ones to get him through that. Sure, they'd initially been horrified about his being a Parselmouth, but they hadn't thought it meant he was doomed to the Dark Arts or something.

In a piece of logic that Harry worried vaguely was a bit circular, or at least folded in on itself, he was worried partly because not having anyone to talk to was how Ginny Weasley had gotten into trouble with Tom Riddle's diary in the first place. Unsurprisingly, Ginny was quite possibly the student _least_ comfortable with this Tom's presence. Trying to discuss it with her tended to be an exercise in futility. It wasn't helping that Snape, with his usual sadism, insisted on forcing them to work together. 

He wasn't the only one guilty of circularity, either. He was almost sure that at least as far as the teachers were concerned, part of the reason they suspected Tom was that there was surely no better way to drive a boy to the Dark Arts than to surround him with the type of suspicion and fear that no one could entirely help!

And the most absurd thing about the whole situation was that everybody was half-giddy over Voldemort's defeat, and by all rights... well, he and Tom had both done a lot more this time than Harry had at a year old. 

Harry looked across the Great Hall to the Slytherin table, half-listening to Hermione lecturing him, Ron, and anybody else within earshot about their latest homework assignment. Tom didn't appear to be having any difficulties at the moment, at least. He sometimes looked extremely tense and by all reports was driving himself to be a model student -- that phrase gave Harry an uneasy turn somehow, and more of one when he remembered he'd heard the diary-Tom gloating over it -- but was currently leaning back in his chair (with one elbow firmly pinning down the notebook another student was trying to swipe) and watching with amusement as something or other bounced around the table, followed by shrieks of laughter. 

As Harry watched, trying to make out what it was, the bouncing object plopped into someone's goblet. Tom hastily fished it back out as soon as the goblet started to wobble dangerously, then dropped it on a napkin. It promptly started hopping again.... Harry squinted. Surely that wasn't Neville's toad _Trevor_ -- no, it was brown. He hadn't _thought_ Tom would....

Not that having anybody's toad hop all over the table and into the food and drink was Harry's idea of a good time for either the students or the toad, but it didn't seem to be bothering the Slytherins and he hadn't _seen_ anybody do worse to the toad than take it out of a goblet before it spilled something. 

Because Harry was paying attention to the Slytherin table, he heard one of the fourth-year girls ask, laughing, "So are you _sure_ that's not a real frog?" 

"Enchanted chocolate frog," Tom's voice replied lightly. "That's all." Well, that explained why it was brown, at any rate.

"You sure?"

"I'd certainly hope so...." 

Harry was listening to Hermione again (a bit dazedly when she started connecting the assignment to other courses, sometimes tenuously) when he noticed that the banter at the farthest table had changed in tone. Tom, for one thing, was starting to sound rather frustrated....

"You did change it to a real frog under there!" 

"I did _not_! I'll show you." Harry looked up just as Tom snatched the brown frog out of midair and bit down on one of its legs. 

A second later, _everyone_ who hadn't already been watching looked up at Tom's yell. Tom knocked his chair over getting up, which didn't seem to accomplish much since he was still holding the frog, and his dismayed expression banished most of the remaining joviality from the conversation. There were still a few hoots, but on the other hand, that might have been a stray owl.

The other Slytherins were starting to get up and back away from him, too. As some of them almost immediately ran into the Hufflepuff table, this started something of a chain reaction. To complicate matters further, some of the students from farther off were trying to get close enough to see. 

"It IS a real frog!" 

"Can't believe he did that --"

"Come off it, who's really surprised?" 

"All of you, return to your seats at once!" Variations on that theme came from all the heads of house.

Harry took a look at Tom's face, which had gone alarmingly pale, and then got up and started pushing determinedly toward the Slytherin table. 

"Harry? What are you doing?" Hermione sounded startled.

"Aren't rescues our department?" he retorted.

"You think Riddle needs rescuing?" Ron sounded rather dubious.

"Him or the frog," Harry muttered. "Probably both. It's all right, I've got it." 

They still followed, if a little more slowly. Harry found the going increasingly difficult until he wedged himself in between the most densely-packed students and popped out on the inside of an apparently inviolate ring. From there it was easy to reach Tom and grab his arm, startling him out of the increasingly ineffective protestations that it hadn't been supposed to be a real frog. 

Once he was close enough, Harry could see the little patch of green where the chocolate covering had been scraped off by Tom's teeth, and the line of blood trickling from torn skin. The chocolate was melting under Tom's fingertips, too, and the frog was struggling wildly. 

"Come on," he said under his breath, then frowned around at the hubbub and said more loudly, but still to Tom, "Come on. Let's get the frog to the infirmary." 

A little to his surprise, Tom closed his mouth and followed when Harry tugged on his arm, and the ring parted with startling alacrity as he towed the younger boy firmly towards the door. They encountered Dumbledore and McGonagall next to it; Tom looked up at them in what looked like fright, but McGonagall nodded tightly and Dumbledore gave them both an encouraging small smile before letting them out. 

No one followed them into the corridors. 

Harry stopped after the first few corners and made Tom turn and look at him. "Are you okay?"

Tom nodded, a bit shakily. "It was only supposed to be animated, not transfigured... I don't know what happened...."

Harry shrugged and started walking again. "Either you made a mistake or somebody decided to play a trick on you. I'm guessing the second; that'd be a pretty advanced mistake."

Tom took a couple of quick steps to catch up with him. "You believe me?"

"Don't sound so shocked. Anybody with any sense would, if they'd seen the look on your face." 

Tom turned and gave Harry a rather embittered look. "You must not think much of most of our fellow students, then." 

Harry winced. "Well... maybe not _all_ of them. They should do better when they stop to think. I think." 

"You're encouraging." Tom looked rather gloomily at his panicked frog and rubbed some of the chocolate off its head. It croaked. 

"The teachers --" 

"The teachers all watch me like hawks as if they think I'm suddenly going to turn chalk-white and perform one of the Unforgivable Curses!" Tom exclaimed in frustration. "I don't mean they're unfair, but... they're suspicious. Everybody's suspicious. And I've been trying to be friendly, and I've been trying to do everything _right_... and now this."

There was a loud ribbit from the frog, as if for emphasis. Harry wondered briefly why McGonagall hadn't just transfigured it back into chocolate. It seemed simpler.

"Maybe this'll reassure them," he said thoughtfully.

Understandably, Tom looked at him as if suspecting insanity. "You do not have the same definition of reassuring as I do, do you."

"Probably not," said Harry, "but think about it. Apparently, when Voldemort was here, he was amazingly good at practically everything."

Tom interrupted him indignantly. "I'm not going to mess things up just to --"

"Of course you aren't," Harry interrupted right back. "You _ought_ to be just as good at everything -- well, everything you're _supposed_ to be doing -- as he was. But it's creepy if you always get things right on the first try unless you're Hermione or something." That got half a smile, at least. "And even she makes a mistake once in a while. Part of the problem for you is that people are worried you _do_ remember things from Voldemort. Especially the way you've been breezing through Defense against the Dark Arts." 

"I'm 'breezing through' Defense against the Dark Arts because _I_ had a real teacher for my first year, not a conceited fraud." Tom paused. "She was very sure of herself, but she had _reason_. I wonder what happened to her?"

"I don't know," said Harry. Then he snorted. "I'm sure _our_ first-year teacher could have taught us quite a bit if he'd actually wanted to try."

"Well, maybe not about _defense_...."

"I didn't say it would've been anything we wanted to learn. Although I'd think Voldemort would have known how to block things. Obviously Quirrell didn't." 

Tom stopped in front of the doors to the Infirmary and regarded them with rather less enthusiasm than many people would have directed toward a large meal of fresh slugs, then pushed them open. "Madam Pomfrey? I have a hurt frog...."

*****

The frog incident might or might not have reassured anyone. The resulting alarm, however, at least failed to daunt Tom's house-mates enough to prevent them from making him their new Seeker. 

Harry had draped himself in his father's invisibility cloak and gone to watch the Slytherin Quidditch tryouts. Tom was not overall a more expert flyer than Malfoy -- Malfoy actually had the edge there -- but had still managed to outperform him at spotting and catching the Snitch. Harry could still outfly his opposite number, he thought, but he wasn't completely sure how much Tom's skill might improve once he got used to fifty years' worth of advances in broomstick technology. 

Lucius Malfoy had made only a little protest before grinding his teeth and accepting the situation. 

Currently, Harry was trying to ignore the fact that the Slytherin and Gryffindor teams had somehow both wound up on the field at the same time again, both with official permission, and neither -- to the astonishment of absolutely nobody -- was willing to back down. 

The teams had each taken an end of the field and were somewhat resentfully keeping mostly to their own halves, although there were enough stray Bludgers coming from both directions to be suspect. There would probably have been more if not for Madam Hooch's volunteering to supervise. 

At least Tom wasn't likely to try to kill him.

Harry spotted the Snitch near midfield, ducked a Bludger from his own team, and dived. The wind howled in his ears, and -- eyes fixed firmly on the Golden Snitch -- Harry stretched out his right arm.

Something slammed hard into him. Harry lost sight of the Snitch as he keeled over sideways on his broomstick, clutching desperately at it with his legs and both hands. After a bad moment of skidding, he wrenched the broom underneath himself so he could steady it out of its sidewise scoot.

When he could take his attention off the wayward broomstick and look up, Harry saw Tom Riddle a few feet away bringing his own broomstick's drift under control.

Madam Hooch's whistle shrieked loudly, but neither boy even jumped. They just hung in the air, half lying on the brooms. Harry thought Tom looked about as dazed as he felt.

Definitely just as well she was there, Harry thought vaguely. Someone would probably have been hurt by this point otherwise. Come to think of it, Tom looked awfully blurry, and he could barely see Madam Hooch... oh. He had lost his glasses. 

"Disgraceful! Flying into him like that -- good sportsmanship should not be restricted to a match!"

Harry squinted, uncertain which of them was being scolded. He hadn't _meant_ to collide with Tom; this didn't seem quite fair....

"I didn't see him!" Tom protested. "I was after the Snitch, not trying to hurt him."

"How could you not _see_ him?" Madam Hooch demanded. "You dived practically on top of him!"

"I was looking at the Snitch!" Tom's voice was high with stress, and he sounded a bit petulant as he added, "It was _our_ Snitch anyway; I didn't think he'd be going after it!" 

"Madam Hooch," Harry interrupted as she drew breath to speak again, "I believe him. I didn't see him either, and it felt like we hit pretty much on the same level."

They both turned to him. Harry thought they were looking at him, anyway. It would make sense. He fixed his eyes on where Madam Hooch's ought to be and pushed his hair out of the way. 

"Are you certain?" she asked.

"Well, not absolutely," explained Harry. "It all happened pretty fast, so one of us _could_ have been flying higher." 

"I know where you were in the air, Potter. And _you_ know what I meant." 

Right. "I don't read minds, Madam Hooch," Harry said politely, "but I don't see any reason not to think it was an accident." He looked around and smiled ruefully. "We _are_ kind of at the boundary line."

Madam Hooch seemed to accept this, nodded sharply, and flew away from them again. "Return to practice."

Tom looked at Harry, still hovering, and asked hesitantly, "Why did you do that?"

Harry squinted at him in surprise. "It was true."

Tom rubbed his forehead and said quietly, "Thanks." Then he started to turn away. 

"Wait!" said Harry.

Tom paused, hovering.

Embarrassed, Harry pointed downward. "Do you think you could help me find my glasses?" He thought better of this almost at once; Tom's Slytherin teammates would likely never let him hear the end of it if he helped Harry. "No, that's all right, never mind." 

"Make _up_ your mind." Tom sounded slightly amused and began circling toward the ground. "I'll find them -- hah." He banked low and came up from a sweep of the ground with a glint of glass and metal in hand. 

Then he tossed it at Harry. 

Harry caught it easily. He might not be able to see clearly, but unlike the Snitch his glasses followed a very predictable trajectory. "Thanks."

"I'm almost surprised neither of us happened to catch them, before," Tom said. "Though since we didn't, I can't believe they didn't break."

"Of course they didn't," Harry said, unfolding the glasses and settling them on his nose. "I looked up an Unbreakability charm to put on them, I got so tired of having to fix them." 

Tom's eyebrows shot up, which Harry could actually see now. "I hope you charmed them not to hurt you, too, then."

Harry blinked. "Um... no," he admitted sheepishly.

"You'd better. Or take the first one off. It's probably okay for the lenses, but.... I'm sure she could _do_ it, but would having Madam Pomfrey pry your glasses out of your face really be better than fixing them?"

Harry shuddered. "No. I guess I'd better take the Unbreakability charm off, then. I don't know the other one."

"I do." Tom held out his hand. "Let me see them."

Harry hesitated for a moment over handing his glasses to a Slytherin, even a friendly one, to be enchanted. On the other hand... they weren't _playing_ each other yet, and Tom probably had enough people not trusting him as it was. He'd probably rather win fairly, anyway.

Besides, he'd handed over a little bit of his _life_ to the other boy; what was a pair of glasses he'd already held anyway? 

Harry handed his glasses over and watched as Tom solemnly fished his wand out of a pocket and, with fierce concentration, pronounced a charm and handed the glasses back. 

"Thanks."

"You're wel--"

"HARRY!" Fred Weasley bellowed. 

"WHAT?" Harry shouted back, putting on his glasses.

Fred arced toward him and bashed a Bludger high into the air and away. "Are you going to sit there talking to the Slytherins all day? _I've_ seen the Snitch three times! Oliver's been busy, but he'll notice you in a minute and have _fits_." 

"Right. Sorry, my glasses fell off and Tom helped because I couldn't see to find them." He nodded at Tom, turning his broomstick back toward the Gryffindor half of the field. "Talk to you later."

"See you at the real match," Tom said with a faintly predatory smile. He swiveled sharply in the air and shot away. 

*****

Harry was prudent enough to have paid sufficient attention to Tom's words to ask Hermione about the charm he had used. It seemed to have been correct. 

Testing it by diving face-first into a rising Bludger during the match against Hufflepuff really hadn't been in his plans, but the glasses neither broke nor bruised him. Of course, as they were not much protection, the Bludger still broke his nose, but there was no additional damage from having the glasses driven into his face. This was good. Madam Pomfrey fixed his nose. 

The glasses also continued to behave decorously during the match with Slytherin. They did not spontaneously slide off his nose. They did not spontaneously combust, shatter, fog up, tap-dance, or transform into frogs. Harry drifted around the field looking for the Snitch and concluded that the various levels of misgivings held by those who knew he had let a Slytherin charm his eyeglasses were probably unfounded. 

They did not prevent him from glimpsing the Snitch, either, which probably would have been the cleverest way to take the opportunity to cheat. Harry spotted a gleam of gold and leaned forward over his broomstick to dash toward it. 

Halfway there and going far too fast to stop even if he'd wanted to, he saw a figure in green speeding toward it from the opposite direction. 

Harry angled very slightly left. 

So did Tom. 

They shot alongside each other and reached for the Snitch at the same time. Harry decelerated as abruptly as he could as soon as he touched metal....

The two Seekers came to a halt facing in opposite directions with the Golden Snitch trapped between their raised palms and sat very still in the air.

Harry blinked across at Tom. The field sounded very silent suddenly, and he wasn't sure whether this was just because the wind no longer whistled in his ears or because the entire audience and both teams were staring at them and trying to figure out whether to cheer or not. He hadn't suddenly gone deaf, because he heard Madam Hooch's whistle when they stopped.

The Snitch's wings beat frantically against his hand.

Tom blinked back at him. "Now what?"

"I have no idea." After a few more seconds of hovering, Harry laughed nervously. "This looks kind of like what Muggles call a high-five."

Tom started to smile a little. "It does, doesn't it?"

They both sat there for a moment longer, feeling extremely silly. Both teams began swooping in to investigate, impeding Madam Hooch's vision and progress. Harry looked over to see her weaving between students.

Then Harry felt Tom's fingertips across his palm as the Slytherin Seeker's hand closed around the Snitch, and the answering smile slid off his face with shock. 

Tumult broke out as the Gryffindors protested and the Slytherins cheered. Both spread somewhat slowly as most of the audience couldn't see through the englobing players. 

Madam Hooch's whistle cut through the noise as she reached them and saw Tom holding up the Snitch and Harry looking stunned. She blinked, then called out, "Slytherin's Seeker has the Snitch."

They'd lost, Harry thought miserably, shutting his eyes. He'd lost. Gryffindor had been ahead, but not by a hundred and fifty points. He'd thought -- 

The referee's voice went on mercilessly. "Match to --"

"Madam Hooch?" Tom interrupted.

"Yes?"

Harry's eyes opened.

"We had it pinned between our hands," Tom explained. "We caught it at the same time."

"Then why," asked Madam Hooch, "are you holding it now?" 

Tom shrugged. "It was an awkward position." 

It was Slytherin beginning to protest now. 

"Very well." The whistle shrieked again. Madam Hooch shouted, "The Seekers caught the Snitch at the same time. According to the rules of Quidditch, the catch is null." She plucked the Snitch from Tom's hand and tossed it into the air; it promptly flew away. "Continue play!" 

Harry held his place in the air, as did Tom, while the rest of their teammates broke away and resumed play. Several of the Slytherins shouted their disappointment at Tom.

Harry waited until it was quiet before asking, "Why did you do that?"

Tom looked at him in silence for a long moment, then said, "It's the choices we make...." He trailed off, then broke into a mischievous grin. "Besides, I'd prefer a clean win, not one based on Gryffindor innocence." 

He sped away across the field, leaving Harry to sputter and then take off after him. 

*****

Further installments of what has become the Time's Riddle series may be found at Alan Sauer's and Persephone's author page. The first two sequels are "Trouble Brewing" and Worth a Thousand Words" -- there will, however, be more sequels and eventually, we think, some prequels, so by the time you read this, who knows? 


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